Asynchronous online play, yep. And 2 players can also play on the same console.
Alright, some impressions. Lets start off with the basic features:
There are offline modes, either vs the KI in exhibition or tournament matches, or as hotseat vs another human. Of course it also has the asynchronous play. Extras is nothing of importance, just credits etc.
The 38 tutorials look like this:
..and they serve as a rudimentary introduction to the game and chess itself. It explains how to move & use the cameras as well as some chess principles as En Passent. Its nothing fancy, but most of the time they let you do one move yourself that shows what the tutorial is about, so its not only dry reading (for anyone still learning chess).
There are also 100 "check mate in...moves" challenges, ranging from 1 to 5 moves. What I also like is that they have about 20 difficulty levels ranking from Monkey to Grand Master. Even beginners should be able to play at least on Monkey I assume because its rather forgiving, so it might be a nice first foray into AI chess for someone.
The game also keeps track of your stats, so you can look up how many times you did the En Passent, won games or whatever. Its also interesting to note, that you can actually save matches to rewatch them later if you want. Oh and, I turned them off for the screenshots (select I believe), but there are also boxes on the side that will use the standard notes for every move done so far: "Ka2" etc.
There are 3 different views:
The first one is top down, second one is sort of a free camera that I usually tilt a bit to one side while playing, and the last one is sort of the cinematic camera for taking pictures that lets you center on a single chess piece, for example:
The chess sets are pretty varied, and they also have different "textures" so you can decide to play with stone, marble or wood pieces. It looks really nice.
Now onto my gripes with it (2 and 3 arent really that important, just personal preferences I guess):
1. When I played yesterday night, one setting got the game to dip the FPS count a bit. Nothing severe/game breaking, but noticeable enough that I was a bit disappointed. Tried another table after that which didnt seem to have the same problem.
2. I am missing piece interaction. Like when the pieces are moving and hitting an opponents piece, the other one simply disappears. I would have loved to see them interacting and actually knocking the other piece over.
3. Not all that important, but still a bit annoying: In the third view mode you can tilt the view by using the right analog stick AND the gyro sensor, which makes finding a sweet spot for a photo a bit difficult as you cant hold it completely still.
All in all, I'd say its a really nice looking game that does everything a chess game is supposed to do in style with some minor downsides that definitely is worth 7,99 if you have someone to play it with. Make sure to buy the Halloween pack, instead of the base game, though, as it contains the Halloween set for free. Might be a limited offer until tuesday.
Will try once more. In case I beat it, you'll get a PSN message.
